Datalicious Blog - Data Driven Marketing

Visit Datalicious and Inxmail at Ad:Tech 2010 in Sydney to learn about advanced email marketing

Visit Datalicious and Inxmail at our combined stand at Ad:Tech in Sydney on Tuesday and Wednesday this week if you want to find out how to elevate your company's email marketing to the next level using a combination of advanced web analytics, merchandising and automatic email targeting.

Most companies would already be working with basic segmentation based on self-selected user interestes to make their email campaigns more targeted. However, the key problem with this approach is that users' interests change over time so in order to remain relevant, marketers need to keep up with their users' changing preferences. 

The easiest and most accurate way to keep user profiles updated is to combine already existing static profile information with dynamically collected and more up to date data such as the users' observed campaign and website behaviour.

Automated email campaigns based on dynamic profiles in combination with on-site merchandising can deliver highly targeted and integrated campaigns, delivering a superior user experiences and increase in conversion rates.

Visit us at Ad:Tech this week to find out how to boost your email marketing or email us at insights@datalicious.com anytime.

   
Click here to download:
adtech_inxmail_email_marketing.zip (146 KB)

How to add an 'email this post' link including Google Analytics tracking to your Posterous blog

Social media buzz or not, email is still the most frequently used tool to share interesting things with your network so why not make it as easy as possible for them?

Would you like to add an 'email this post' link with Google Analytics tracking to your Posterous blog similar to the below (Thanks @ianlyons, for prompting us to write again)?

The email would like similar to the below once people click on the above 'email this post' link, as you can see the email is ready to be send including perma link to the post and Google Analytics tracking parameters.

1. Ok, first you need to generate a URL with Google Analytics tracking parameters so any clicks are picked-up and recorded. Skip this step if you don't want to track responses from forwarded emails. 

To generate your URL go to the below page and fill in the form as shown as shown, generate the URL and copy it.

Campaign Source: email-post
Campaign Medium: email
Campaign Name: email-post

The tracking URL should look similar to the below depending on how much you changed the above form text.

http://www.domain.com/?utm_source=email-post&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email-post

2. Now you need to prepare the custom mailto link code that you can insert into your custom Posterous theme including the appended Google Analytics tracking parameters. To do that go to the below site, fill in the form as shown, generate the mailto URL and copy it.

To: AAA
Subject: BBBTitleCCC
Body: I thought you might find this post interesting.
DDDPermalinkEEE?utm_source=email-post&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email-post

Make sure you add the Google Analytics tracking parameters highlighted above to the body text behind the 'DDDPermalinkEEE' part.

The mailto URL should look similar to the below depending on how much you changed the above form text.


3. Also, before we can insert the code into the Posterous theme we need to first clean it up a little and turn it into an actual link.

A) Completely remove the 'AAA' in the above URL.
B) Change the 'BBB' to '{' and the 'CCC' to '}'.
C) Change the 'DDD' to '{' and the 'EEE' to '}'.

Please make sure you only replace and remove exactly what I highlighted above otherwise the code may break. Once done the code should look similar to the below.


D) Finally wrap the encoded URL into an actual HTML link tag. Once done the final code should look similar to the below.

4. Ok, you're ready to insert the code into your custom Posterous theme. For more information on how to install a custom theme visit the below page.

To have the link appear in the same position as on our blog copy and paste the HTML link code into the following position.

Target: Integrated campaign planning and analytics delivering Christmas like results mid year

Challenge

Develop an integrated campaign flow across traditional and digital channels to maximise impact and implement the necessary analytics framework to evaluate campaign performance.

Solution

Development of integrated campaign experience in cooperation with the client’s creative and digital agencies to enable a smooth campaign flow and optimal user experience designed to push social sharing. The early development and integration of the analytics framework into campaign planning process from the very beginning ensured tracking best practice was followed and a maximum amount of data could be collected across all channels. The project also included an in-depth review of the current Google Analytics set-up leading to the implementation of advanced website visitor segmentation capabilities.

Results

Traffic levels on the Target network of sites increased significantly during the integrated campaign, for the first time rivalling historic peaks from previous Christmas periods mid year. The campaign also resulted in a visible increase in retail transactions in the targeted product category and an increase in new CRM program subscribers, delivering and overall positive return on media investment. Thanks to a system of unique vouchers and the availability of advanced segmentation options in Google Analytics, the generated retail revenue could be tied back to the originating media channels and broken down by various segments delivering additional customer insights.

Tourism Western Australia: Omniture SiteCatalyst and Traction integration for smarter email targeting

Challenge

Implement, maintain and manage a combined email-marketing and web analytics platform designed to enhance visitor profiling and thus increase content relevance and user interaction.

Solution
 
Design, implementation and ongoing management of an integrated Traction email and Omniture web analytics platform. The final solution enabled Tourism WA to identify and profile individual travellers based on their campaign and website behaviour and allowed us to segment website visitors according to their specific destination interests as well as types of holiday packages.
 
Results

Using interest based customer segmentation with smart targeting and trigger based email campaigns we were able to increase email open and response rates by almost 100% compared to the travel industry average. Combining user profiles with website behavioural data generated valuable additional insights that will be influencing the planning and execution of future campaigns.
 

   
Click here to download:
Tourism_Western_Australia_tag_.zip (1957 KB)

Silverpop research: Viral link sharing propensity from email newsletters by social network

Interesting research study from Silverpop on measuring viral sharing of email content in select social networks.

Key insights from the study include

  • Most companies include four to five different sharing links
  • The life of a shared message is about one week
  • Just including sharing links isn't enough, content is key
  • This is supported by inconsistent click-through rates
  • Facebook dominates among the social networks
  • View rates are still low but expected to grow with social media
  • Over 20% increase in reach due to social sharing

Interesting is also, that the main social networks (i.e. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter) that are most often included in emails are not necessarily the ones attracting the most clicks on sharing links (see graph below).

Download the original research study here
http://www.silverpop.com/landing-engage/eMarketer_html/ShareStudy_oct.html

Forrester ExactTarget report on changing consumer contact preferences

According to the report email gained in popularity for marketing messages but Internet users reported using it less for their own written communications, the biggest increase here happened in social networks.

Read the original article here or download the full report from ExactTarget
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007330
http://pages.exacttarget.com/channel_bundle_home

   
Click here to download:
Forrester_ExactTarget_report_o.zip (20 KB)